NEAR Intents Hacked for $3.8M, Services Halted to Patch Vulnerability

NEAR Intents, a multichain transaction protocol, has halted its services after being hacked for $3.8 million via an exploit of its Omni deposit and withdrawal infrastructure. The protocol revealed the security incident at 2pm GMT+1 and claimed that its services would resume within the hour after it was able to patch the 'contract-side vulnerability'. However, deposits and withdrawals across multiple networks, including BSC, Polygon, and Optimism, would remain unavailable until the Omni infrastructure is patched.

The protocol, NEAR Intents, was recently in the news for helping to stop stolen Bitget funds. Earlier this month, Bitget was hacked for over $380 million in an attack likely stemming from North Korea. NEAR Intents' General Manager, Alex Shevchenko, revealed that $50 million worth of Bitget funds tried to pass through the protocol, but only $166,000 was able to pass, while the rest 'went to other providers'.

The hacking incident has sparked a debate among crypto users who are questioning just how decentralized NEAR Intents is. The price of NEAR Protocol's token NEAR fell from $5.1 to $4.79 in the minutes following the disclosure.